Downtown Fort Lauderdale homeless population swelled by jail releases

FORT LAUDERDALE When Robert Jordan was released from jail, he planned to leave immediately for a job in Tampa.

But for lack of a $55 bus ticket — the result of a change in Broward policy — he was left to wander the streets of downtown, with no money, no friends and no way out.

As city and county officials struggle to deal with hundreds of homeless men and women, this is the way their population grows — one by one. On an average day, 150 people are released from the county jail — often in the middle of the night — and many have no means, no local friends or relatives and no options.

Yet in recent months, Broward County has made it tough for them to get out of town. Getting a free bus ticket now requires a minimum six-month residency. And the Fort Lauderdale commission is no longer funding a $25,000 busing program that police used to send 140 homeless men and women out of South Florida last year.

"I don't want to be homeless here," said Jordan, 61, a carnival worker who was in prison on a drug charge. "If someone has a real need, I think somebody should help them out."

The revolving door between jail and the street "is a huge issue, which we have been talking about for years," said Mayor Jack Seiler. "We have 31 cities in Broward County, and people get arrested all over. But when they get released and have nowhere to go, they stay in Fort Lauderdale. So we end up with the homeless population from around the county. That's not right, not the way it should be."

Neither Seiler or David Scharf, an official with the Broward Sheriff's Office, which runs the jail, could estimate the number of daily releases who take up residence on the streets.

Yet Seiler said there is "more than anecdotal evidence, from police, from homeless outreach folks, that this is reality. They have no resources, and they basically hang out in Fort Lauderdale."

Alima Garba, a case worker at LifeNet4Families, where Jordan discovered he could get a free hot lunch, said she sees people newly released from jail every day. "They get stuck out there with no food, shelter or money, and then they might do something illegal," she said.

If re-arrested and returned to jail, "it's not only bad for that person, but it cost taxpayers a tremendous amount of money," said Scharf, director of community programs for the six-week-old administration of Sheriff Scott Israel. The average cost of housing one prisoner is $118 a day.

In Palm Beach County, Articia Futch, inmate program manager for the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, said every prisoner is screened before release. Those who say they are homeless are given a bus pass to a shelter. If the release comes late at night, she said, a deputy is assigned to drive the ex-prisoner to a shelter.

"The primary reason we help them is not only to reduce the rate of recidivism, but for humantarian reasons: We want them to succeed," she said.

Jordan, had been doing time on drug charges in the Desoto Correctional Institution, does not qualify because he was moved to the county jail only two weeks ago.

"We're not traveler's aid," said Sarah Curtis, a manager with the county's division of housing options who oversees the $50,000 budgeted for homeless busing. "People call and say, 'I was here with the carnival and I want to go home.' But that's not the intent."

Without money and a place to go, however, "What are we expecting?" asked Broward commissioner Dale Holness. "These folks continue to be in a situation where they might become a criminal. And they have a negative impact on the businesses downtown. They complain. It's a sad state we're in."

Officers at the Broward County jail are instructed to tell those being released about area shelters, said Scharf. But he acknowledged that does not always happen.

To interrupt the cycle of jail-street-jail, Israel is proposing a $2.5 million makeover of the now-closed stockade and turning it into the Community Programs Campus, where low-risk and work-release prisoners would have access to computers, counseling and job training.

The facility would also offer transitional housing to those such as Jordan who are leaving the system, said Scharf. "We want to make sure we're not setting people up for failure. That's the plan, to re-engage these folks properly."

Whatever programs are in the works will come too late for Jordan.

Two years ago, he said, he arrived in Hollywood driving the van he lived in, on assignment from his boss in Tampa to pick up another carny and take him back to the West Coast.

Instead, he was arrested by Hollywood police and spent 15 months in the Desoto Correctional Institution before his drug conviction was thrown out and an appeals court ordered a new trial.

After being brought back to Broward County two weeks ago, he pleaded guilty to possession rather than risk a second trial, and was freed after being sentenced to time served.

He said he does not know what happened to the van or his possessions.

"I am just walking the streets right now," said Jordan, a native of Mississippi. "They even threw away my ID. I don't think that's fair."